Editions

Tijuana Gets Lit in Berlin

The Art That is Highlighting Issues of the US-Mexico Border Wall

Projection of the One Day We Will Dance Again project by Adrian Sierra Garcia

With a vivid emanating glow, artist Adrian Sierra Garcia captures his audience through hypnotic carmine lights — a warm sense of passion juxtaposes with the harsh coldness of the stark technology. The exceptional light structures expose and reflect issues of humanity and the human existence while exuding an aura of enchantment, seducing viewers, and enticing them to draw closer. The magnetism that this medium produces creates an exceptional way to captivate the visitors, elegantly directing their concentration to the difficult and, at times, unpleasant realities of the artist’s topic.

Focusing on those afflicted by the US-Mexico border wall, subtlety plays no part in Adrian Sierra Garcia’s ambitious artistic research project, One Day We Will Dance Again. First constructed during the Bush era, the crude border wall is a visual exemplification and setting for the rebirth and growth of xenophobia in the Orwellian world which has brutally blossomed under Trump and beyond. The wall’s injurious constitution has created both conscious and unconscious effects, materializing both physically and psychologically. Literally highlighting issues built into the physical and conceptual nature of the wall, One Day We Will Dance Again aims to capture public attention through various events and urban interventions.

The project debuts with One Day | Berlin — an interactive sound and light art exhibition held at the Benhadj&Djilali gallery in Berlin. A city which is famously familiar with the long-lasting and multitudinous effects of a wall, Berlin, as the site of the exhibition, also serves to elaborate upon the historical use of such merciless tactics, and the retrospective ire that such entities produce … a reminder of the idea that perhaps those who stand on a particular side of the wall might also stand on the wrong side of history.

Combining Adrian Sierra Garcia’s brilliant red lights with a harsh metal barrier, and an intense sound installation, visitors will be thrust into an immersive experience, forcing an immediate adjustment to the encompassing situation with which they are presented. Creating an exhibition which directly plays on nearly all the senses, One Day | Berlin constructs a moment of suspension from habitual thinking, introducing a new space of perception and possible recognition of realities experienced outside of one’s own.

November 2019 will mark the 30-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, and the artist and the Benhadj&Djilali gallery will work to create large-scale light installations during the celebrations to bring the focus back to the present, shining a light on the current social and political climate as a fractal of history which sits at a dangerous precipice requiring attention and amelioration. And while the anniversary of the fall of the wall is momentous, One Day We Will Dance Again is a work of slow progression with a monumental climax situated at the wall itself.

A strange construction as it is, the US-Mexico border wall ends on the West Coast by plunging unceremoniously into the Pacific Ocean. The rusted metal bars are like something from a petulant child’s imagination, yet they are quite real, and they divide with unflinching indifference. It is here that Adrian Sierra Garcia plans to illuminate the wall with his captivating lights, burning its obtrusive existence brightly into the skyline. This visualization of that which at a moment is invisible unveils another unfortunate layer embedded into the issue … blindness, both deliberate and ignorant.

Artists have the unique ability to address pressing social issues with a creative and diverse platform and style. Unbeholden to a specific medium, various elements of difficult issues can be exposed or re-understood through the artists’ innovation. This unremitting opportunity of presentation means that artists will always have and always will forge a new way to reach the public on an emotional level, providing a space for alternatives and new realizations. Adrian Sierra Garcia and One Day We Will Dance Again dives headlong into this process raising awareness on the issue of the callous undertones behind actions brought by national divisions. A work of incredible aesthetic and conceptual merit, the project is precisely what we need more of in the art world.